Physician Poet
As a physician, it is my job to gather information and make
decisions based on organized thinking and to do so in a timely
manner, often in 10 or 15 minutes. My day is filled with a
multitude of different stories from two dozen patients and
I am supposed to filter out less pertinent information and
reach logical conclusions based on things I can see and measure.
My choices are evidence-based and always focused on the same
goal--a healthier patient.
My decisions in poetry, if not exactly the opposite, are quite
different. There is no proof, no path, no plan for a satisfiying
poem, for a poem that surprises me. I can't follow a linear
decision process to get there and this pleases me. I am quite
lost most ofthe time while I'm writing a poem and it feels
lovely.It feels like I make decisions in poems not just froma
different part of my brain, but from an entirelydifferent
brain. My satisfaction in medicine is built on competence
and confidence; my satisfaction inpoetry is built on being
disoriented and curious and trying to find my way.
Being sick, being a patient, is a lonely business. As a patient,
you are suddenly displaced from the land of the well to the
land of the ill; you can see the well going about their business,
but you feel unseen. All the rules have changed. I think writing,
when it is going well, also feels like this--lonely and closer
to death and closer to life at the same time. As a physician,
I feel priviledged to have an intimate connection with patients
living in the land of the ill, to help make that journey less
lonely, when I can. Good doctoring often means being a good
witness. When I am writing from a true place, about things
I don't understand, that loneliness feels useful; it helps
me witness the poem unfolding.